the old haunt by Trini Rogando
i wonder if they know how the world ends -
they with their flighty smiles and
puffed-up chests. ghosts tend to be like
that, all self-important,
as if they know something you don’t.
they toss nervous glances over their shoulders
like children playing ball, juggling the
weighty secrets of life and death
over nets of threaded time. now, perhaps,
i realize they might be just as airheaded
as the rest of us - why else would they
still hang around their long-gone haunts?
perhaps they do know something secret
and new that the living are not privy to.
perhaps it is because they’ve looked death
in the face—seen the end of the world—
and watched it continue on, rather unassumingly.
Trini Rogando is a junior at TJHSST in Alexandria, Virginia. Her work has been published in Kalopsia Literary Journal and she was recently named a National Winner of the National High School Poetry Contest. She plans on pursuing English Literature in college.